Infinite Books

Cecilie and Reuben are a young, professional New York couple working in journalism. However, after Reuben has been canceled from his NPR job, Cecilie is now the sole breadwinner while Reuben stays home taking care of their firstborn. Neither one of them is particularly happy with the situation. Reuben fulfills his parental duties but doesn’t particularly enjoy them; Cecilie, who is Danish,  always feels slightly different, even in multicultural New York. Being fed up with tedious yet exhausting everyday activities, they go to Denmark for vacation and to reunite with Cecilie’s family and friends.

But, as the title smartly suggests, taking from a famous line from “Hamlet,” something is rotten in the state of Denmark. At first, they are both excited, tasting the new freedom without constantly having their baby in tow.  Cecilie meets her friends and feels she can speak the same language as others – finally! Reuben befriends Mikkels, a high-level journalist, and is strangely fascinated by Mikkel’s persona. It’s almost like a high school nerd suddenly finds the most popular guy who, inexplicably, wants to hang out with him.
 
When the reader figures out that this novel will deal with the traditional male model and perhaps with integrating into a new community and even a new country, Andrew Lipstein brings a significant moral dilemma. Another one of Cecile’s friends, Jonas, has been diagnosed with a rare disease, but he refuses any treatment, and the only person he listens to is Mikkel. How far can one go to change the behavior and even the life of another person? What would be best for our friends? Should we lie and cheat to make them understand how wrong they are?

This is Andrew Lipstein’s second book, which I read after “The Vegan,” and I’m very impressed with how good a writer he is. Even though I know Cecilie and Reuben would never become my friends in real life because neither side would want it, I understand them well and can relate to their problems. There is also a feeling of loneliness and need for other people, the constant hunger for acceptance, permeating “Something Rotten,” which is hard to forget. I’ll be thinking about this insightful novel for a long time.

SOMETHING ROTTEN by Andrew Lipstein, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025